11+ months

I'm terribly late with my update this time around. Things have been ridiculously crazy, and I'm surprised I'm even alive. Though that is an exaggeration, it feels true enough. In the last 10-15 days, the following has happened:

• Mashui left for her vacation with Vijay and me scrambling to maintain some order in our house - bad
• We bought a house, our first ever - very good
• We tried day care for Vir - okay
• We decided not to go with the day care for now and made a last minute decision to take him to Ddun and leave him with my mom - good (we thought)
• There was a problem with the house we bought - very bad
• The problem is more or less sorted after much screaming and shouting - okay
• I left Vir in Dun and came back thinking I have a week or so by myself, but he went on a hunger srike and I had to return in 2 days - bad. sigh.
• Vir now has a stomach infection - very bad

This roller coaster life will leave a wreck where I used to be. But for now, while I can still think straight, here's the good part...Vir's list of achievements this month! Here's all the stuff he can now do:

• Cruise! He can hold on to things (furniture, my pyjamas, hanging tablecloths, etc.) and walk! He was a little slow at this initially, but picked up confidence in no time at all and, this morning, walked up and down our verandah 6 times pushing a plastic chair.
• Kiss better than ever
• Roar like a tiger
• Boo like a cow (he had forgotten this, but has picked it up again)
• Dance using his head and the rest of his body alternately
• Shake hands
• Wave bye sometimes
• Understand several things like stand up, let's go out, do you want to have milk?, where's biji?, and are you having fun? Some of these are in Hindi and some in English. Curiously, he has not demonstrated and understanding of the simplest of words - "no"
• Spit out food that he doesn't like. This is a terrible development, since it means I can no longer trick him into eating. I can take the horse to the water now, but no longer can I make him drink.
• Jabber in a language I can't understand yet, though I pretend to and even manage to talk back in the same language!

There's more, I know, and I gues I'll just add to this if I think of something else. The best part this month, for me, was when I came back to Dehradun after having left him for three days with mom and dad. The welcome I got from my sleepy little kid simply cannot be beaten. I think I'll smile about that for the rest of my life!